The Phylactery
by Kled
Summary: Tanathal, a lich held captive by the Knights of the Ebon Blade since the war in Northrend, is given over to the Silver Hand as part of a minor agreement between the two factions. Chained far beneath the catacombs of their headquarters, he is wardened by a paladin named Eve Ducreux. Eager but patient to reclaim his freedom, he tries to slowly lower her unfaltering guard.
1. Chapter 1: A New Prison, a New Jailer

Tanathal had every reason to be anxious for what was to come today. The lich; a skeletal being that was perhaps one of the most powerful and intelligent of the Scourge's many undead abominations, was to be traded over from the Knights of the Ebon Blade to the Knights of the Silver Hand. It was long ago, shortly before the death of his master, the Lich King, when he had been captured by the order of death knights and interrogated for information.

And he had told all, _after_ making a deal. Curling his silver tongue around after his stubbornness had finally given out, he had managed to strike a bargain with the traitorous death knights. In exchange for the information on what he knew of the Scourge's plans, he would be granted mercy, yet would remain a prisoner for as long as his unlife suited him. With what seemed like begrudgement in their tones, they had granted him that wish and spent many years afterword keeping him restrained. But then, for whatever reason that was their own, he overheard them discuss the trade he was now fretting over and they soon set to preparing him for travel as he could only watch.

Currently, all he could see was darkness as he was transported around within the giant, magic-suppressing iron coffin he had been enclosed in for transportation from Northrend. After growing weary on the many ideas swarming his mind on how the paladins of the Light would treat him once he arrived at his destination, he let darkness take hold of him. When he awoke next he was no longer in that cramped box of enchanted metal, but fully bound and suspended in the air by chains hanging from the ceiling that wrapped around his robed, skeletal frame. Paying close attention to his bonds, he could see that each link had tiny runes of holy power glistening on their surfaces, and the magical power radiating from it that sapped his mighty strength considerably. Tanathal felt quite weak from it, but that weakness was comparable to a stiff soreness one would feel after awakening from sleep.

There was little light in the room, but with a slow turn of his rigid neck he soon made out the details of the gray walls, which were either smooth and etched cleanly, or covered in stacked brick. A set of levers, most likely built to operate his binding chains, were attached to the wall next to the only door in the far back. Attracting his sight like a moth to the glow of a flickering candle in the center of the chamber he could see a jar-like object covered in intricate symbols sitting on a sturdy pedestal, and he knew right off that it was his precious phylactery; the vessel that housed his soul while his mind controlled his physical form. Looking down further upon noticing something else, there, just in front of him, stood one female shape.

She was a human clad in heavy silver-and-red armor and had a large sword sheathed by her side while a shield rested behind her back. Part of her chest just below her neck was unarmored, exposing some of the light, fair skin she had. Her hair, running down to just past and over her shoulders was a vivid and bright scarlet color, and her eyes were of a striking amber texture. They looked at him in baleful silence for a few minutes. Shaking his skull-esque head and the long tusks that hooked down from either side of it, Tanathal looked back down at her with the ethereal blue orbs glowing within his sockets in place for his eyes.

"Who are you?" he inquired in a low tone. The human was quiet for almost a minute before responding.

"I am your jailer now, lich," she finally said in a tone as cold and emotionless as the undead he was once used to conversing with. "I am a paladin of the Knights of the Silver Hand and my name is Eve Ducreux. I will be the only one who watches you, and I alone will tend to whatever 'needs' you have. In other words, I am your custodian."

Tanathal squirmed his skeletal frame within his dreadful restraining bonds in a vain attempt to comfort himself, as much as he could anyhow. "Might I have the courtesy of knowing where I am?" he deadpanned next, putting on as much of an uninterested visage as he could muster. Eve placed a gloved, gauntlet-covered hand to her mouth in a pondering action before deciding to respond.

"We are in a chamber specially constructed to house you, beneath our capital of the Light's Hope Chapel, and in turn beneath the Sanctum of Light. I have been told that we are to keep you imprisoned here until the day when your maddening boredom causes you to beg for an end to your cursed existence, or at least until a time comes where we trade you off in a manner similar to how we got you to begin with," she said monotonously. "Apologies if you find our spartan accommodations to not be as appeasing as you wish."

Tanathal hummed before letting out a mirthless chuckle. "It would be a lie if I were to say that I did not expect more than _this_ particular manner of restraint. Though I do feel a something disgustingly pure gnawing at the base of my cranium, it is a pain I shall resist."

The paladin began to turn around and walked up to the phylactery, a dry smirk on her face. "To that, we shall see. Where you lie beneath is hallowed ground that you would dare not attempt to escape through, for there are more paladins like me living above us than you could think of."

With a small movement of his lower jaw and the golden, ornamental false beard that rested on its end, Tanathal laughed again, this time with more feeling behind his gravely voice. "Whoever said I would try and escape from here in my current state?"

Eve turned back to him and placed a hand to her hip. "The words of a lich are something not to be trusted unless you are one of a weak and arrogant mind. I was trained to inherit this task, and I'll wager my life, heart and soul that I will not fail to uphold it."

Tanathal clicked his bare teeth together raptly at her words before allowing his stiff body to relax as he prepared himself for the waiting to come. "And to _that_ , Eve, we shall see..."


	2. Chapter 2: Easing the Boredom

Once the first four hours slowly passed by, Tanathal could not help but find himself impressed by how dogged and determined this paladin was to stay silent as the stone that made up the walls. Though undead, he could still feel a twinge of ever-observant curiosity race through his frozen bones like a corrupting jolt of burning fel energy.

All Eve did was stand there, either looking to him or the phylactery with that stern and tetchy gaze of hers that felt as icy and unforgiving as the frostbitten sting of Northrend's coldest, darkest recesses. The lich could sense something that provoked her to give off such a malignant glare, and surely it was not purely out of common contempt for the undead. If his hunch was correct, this paladin was hiding something. Perhaps she had lost a dear one to the Scourge or Forsaken? It wouldn't really surprise the lich too much if that was the case.

Still unable to do physically anything, the main thrill to be had was the scarce few times when she walked around. Her footsteps, complimented by the armored boots she wore around her thin, but firmly muscular legs, left small echoes in their wake that drifted around the room like wailing spirits for but a few seconds before dying down into nothing once more, which lasted for more hours that rolled by like a sputtering goblin trike.

Simple silence, as dead as night. As dead as a corpse.

But while this dead stillness might have driven a mere mortal to madness within the day, Tanathal found it to be somewhat amusing. And being in the position he was, it gave him time to do what all liches did best in quiet times such as these. _Think_. Think and plot, which seemed to be a trait his kind excelled at doing in any given situation.

While he did this in front of Eve, his activity was suddenly interrupted as the paladin did something that perplexed him greatly. Without a word, she gave a final look to him with those amber eyes before leaving the room. Now apparently by himself, Tanathal took this time to solely think about his predicament as opposed to the future, quite confused as to why she left before realizing the most likely reason. Of course, not being an undead death knight meant that she, a living human, needed to rest every once in a while.

Tanathal accepted this fact wholly when she did not return after a short while of waiting, and so retreated back into the welcoming safety of his conniving mind.

* * *

Exactly six hours (or so Tanathal estimated) later did Eve return. Lifting his crowned head of bone the absolute second the familiar sound of clinking, armored footsteps echoed from the catacomb-formed hall, a few scant moments later the female paladin's shape entered the prison. In one of her hands and held close to her face, as the lich witnessed, was a small and open book. Though he could not see the title from where he laid, he knew it was no tome filled with preaching lessons, lore and uses on the Holy Light. It was some form of novel, and by the look on her face, she was engrossed in the story it told.

She continued to pace forward, when she stopped under where the lich hung. After several minutes had passed by, Eve finally closed the book after memorizing what page she was on and pocketed it on a pair of straps by her belt's side.

"Good morning," she spoke as she looked up to hum, though the words in her voice were more tasteless and bitter than cheerful and welcoming as they would typically convey to the receiver of them. Tanathal heard her well, but his attention was currently more enclosed on the book she had, like a cat eyeing a mouse it was about to pounce upon and snatch up in its white fangs.

"What was that you were reading?" he asked her, still staring at the book hooked to her side. Eve's brow curled in a brief instant before looking to the object .

"This? Just a common book," she informed him. "I like to read in my spare time, as do most other people."

"Good to know." Silence came between them like a cloud of encroaching mist, and it blanketed the two completely. That is, until the lich spoke again. "What was it about?"

"Oh... just things you Scourge wouldn't understand," she wryly spoke. "Friendship, love... those kinds of things."

"Friendship? _Love?_ Hah!" The boom of Tanathal's unkempt laugh shot out through the chamber and called about like the ring of a church bell for almost a minute. Eve was visibly startled by this burst emotion from the lich, but her composure still held.

"You find this amusing?" she asked him, folding her plated arms over her chest.

"I find it entertaining," said Tanathal, "at just how vexingly little you know of the Scourge. Of _us_ and who, and _what_ , we are. Of what our purpose was before your kind slew the Lich King. Those who chose to fight were killed as a result for their transgressions against us and were meant to be raised into undeath as mindless slaves for their impudence unless they showed promise otherwise. But those who willingly submitted to the Scourge were given the most glorious immortality imaginable, _and_ were blessed with keeping their minds intact. We kept all of our feelings; our goodness, hate, remorse, anger, guilt, happiness, and yes, even _love_."

Eve looked unconvinced. "I've slain enough of your kind to know you think. But even so, how can an undead creature, whose entire purpose is to cause death, misery, and strife all in the name of a foul and unquestionably terrible force, feel _that?_ "

"Because, naïve one, the soul is where all passions and emotions originate from. The mind and heart are merely conduits for it. Even you know that my very own rests within the phylactery behind you, sealed away and safe from the outside world. How easily you could strike it with that sword of yours, and in the process of destroying it, set my soul loose; killing me forever."

Eve bit her lower lip with her teeth as she heard him speak until a droplet of blood as red as her hair seeped through her warm, pricked flesh and into her mouth, filling it with a metallic taste. "I'll admit, a thought like that does seem rather tantalizing. But I was informed of a bargain you made with your captors that prevents me from enacting such an action, no matter how tempting it is. And so, as I have been ordered by Highlord Tirion Fordring, I am not to touch it. Only watch over it."

As Eve looked back to the the vessel that contained the lich's essence, Tanathal could see something about her mien that stole away and consumed his thoughts like a rampant, ever-hungry void lord. It was just a glint - a tiny, minuscule, barely-considerable glimmer - of interest in her young amber eyes. It was nothing more than what a child would show if they found themselves curious at the bigger mysteries of the world, and hoping one day for this knowledge to be imparted to them. It was an expression he himself once showed that eventually and inevitably led to what he was today. Had he still had lips to cover his fleshless mouth, Tanathal would had been smiling wickedly.

"Has something caught your attention?" he asked.

"No. I am just confused," she replied, frowning. "Why would a loathsome creature like you choose to give up your sacred life for the sake of accumulating power? To give up all you had the chance to achieve and leave behind everything and everyone you've ever cared about for the sole purpose of gaining a cursed and undead existence?"

"I have attained far more as what you would called a damned apparition than my mortal coils would ever have allowed me to achieve," he rebutted, but in a civil tone. "And also, as a paladin of the Holy Light, should you truly be attempting to reason such a question with a being like me?"

Eve sighed, their conversation ending with the next sentence she mumbled. "I suppose you are right in that aspect."

For a while after that, quiet came in between the lich and the human as their discussion came to a close. By then, Tanathal had the beginnings of a grand plan finally formulated within his cold and calculating mind. He wanted to break loose from his prison. He would find a way to escape his bindings and return to his frozen place of rebirth known as Northrend.

And the tool that he decided that same day he would use to remove these chains and locks was in the form of that paladin.


End file.
